Recently various newspapers have published articles on Venerable
John Henry Newman, sowing doubts about his sexual inclination. The
following is a clarification by Prof. Ian Ker, an eminent Newman scholar
and Oxford University Professor.

The exhumation of Venerable John Henry Newman's body from his grave
has led to calls in particular from the homosexual lobby that he should
not be separated from his great friend and collaborator Fr. Ambrose St
John, in whose grave Newman is buried in accordance with his own
specific wishes.

The implication of these protests is clear: that Newman wished to be
buried with his friend because, although no doubt chaste and celibate,
nevertheless he had more than simply friendly feelings for St. John.

However, if wanting to be buried in the same grave as someone else
indicates some kind of sexual love for the other person, then C.S.
Lewis' brother Warnie, who is buried in the same grave in accordance
with both brothers' wishes, must have had incestuous feelings for his
brother.

Or again, G.K. Chesterton's devoted secretary, Dorothy Collins, whom
he and his wife regarded as a daughter, while thinking it presumptuous
to ask to be buried in the same grave as the Chestertons. nevertheless
directed that she be cremated and that her ashes should be buried in the
same grave. Does this mean that she had more than filial feelings for
one or both of her employers?

Ambrose St. John was an extremely close friend of Newman. He had
devoted himself for 30 years to the service of Newman, even asking if he
might take a vow of obedience to him at his Confirmation, a request that
was, of course, refused.

Newman blamed himself for his death, having asked him to translate
the German theologian Joseph Fessler's important book on infallibility
in the wake of the First Vatican Council, a last labour of love that had
proved too much for him, overworked as he already was.

In his dark last days as an Anglican, Newman said that Ambrose St.
John had come to him "as Ruth to Naomi". After joining Newman's
semi-monastic community at Littlemore outside Oxford, he had remained as
Newman's closest supporter all through the difficulties of founding the
Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England and all through Newman's many
subsequent trials and tribulations as a Catholic.

In his Apologia pro Vita sue, Newman "with great reluctance"
mentions that at the time of his first religious conversion when he was
15 he became convinced that "it would be the will of God that I should
lead a single life".

For the next 14 years, "with the break of a month now and then", and
then continuously, he believed that his "calling in life would require
such a sacrifice".

Needless to say, there were no "civil partnerships" between men then
in what was still a Christian country where homosexual activity was
punishable by imprisonment and was universally regarded as immoral.
Newman, of course, is talking about marriage with a woman and the
sacrifice that celibacy involved.

The only reason it could have been a sacrifice was because like any
normal man Newman, wished to get married. But, although not belonging to
a church where celibacy was the rule or even the ideal, Newman, steeped
in Scripture as he was, knew the words of our Lord: "there are eunuchs
who have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven".

Twenty five years after his youthful embrace of celibacy, we find
Newman counting the cost, at the conclusion of the extraordinary account
he wrote of his near fatal illness in Sicily in 1833: "The thought keeps
pressing on me, while I write this, what am I writing it for?... Whom
have I, whom can I have, who would take interest in it?... This is the
sort of interest which a wife takes and none but she — it is a woman's
interest — and that interest, so be it, shall never be taken in me....
And therefore I willingly give up the possession of that sympathy, which
I feel is not, cannot be, granted to me. Yet, not the less do I feel the
need of it".

In these moving sentences, written while he was still a clergyman of
the Church of England and fully entitled to marry, we see Newman's total
commitment to the life of virginity to which he felt unmistakably
called, but yet we can also feel the deep pain he experienced in
sacrificing the love of a woman in marriage.

Finally, what should be said to those who think Newman's wishes
should be honoured and that Ambrose St. John's remains should be removed
with his?

Throughout his life as a Catholic. Newman always insisted that
whatever he wrote he wrote under the correction of Holy Mother Church.
That was his constant refrain. If the Church decrees that his remains
should be removed to a church, then Newman's undoubted response would be
that of his last testament. like everything else he wrote, he wrote
under correction of higher authority.

And if that higher authority decrees that his body be removed and
that of his friend left, then Newman would say without hesitation, "so
be it".

Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
3 September 2008, page 3

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